California welcomed a new governor this week – Gavin Newsom. Newsom has set as priorities that anyone in the state would be provided health care at no cost and that the state will remain a sanctuary state. Is there any wonder that the caravans from Central America that were supposedly coming here for humanitarian reasons diverted the path of the caravan from going to Texas and added over 500 miles to their trek to arrive at the border of California?

Another year has gone by and yet there has been zero progress on confronting our dysfunctional immigration policies. Our government in Washington remains stalemated while Democrats refuse to provide funding for border security where people wish to illegally enter our country. We need solutions.

I thought about this while we were going through our annual Christmas day trek for Chinese food. After being told it was an hour wait, I exited the restaurant to find out the top on my son’s car was not properly closing. I ended up driving the car to our local gas station that does our repairs.

Unfortunately, the next day neither our Jewish maven nor his friend who does electrical repairs could figure it out. One friend suggested another Jewish mechanic, but our gas station maven recommended three Mexican brothers who have an upholstery shop. Sure enough, my new Mexican-American friends had it fixed in less than four hours.

Being in Southern California, we have a lot of Mexican-Americans and many others from Central America plus people from all corners of the world. My experience is they are wonderful people with a great sense of humor. Certainly they really are interested in supporting themselves and their families. And we are interested they enter the country legally.

There are a lot of charges and countercharges thrown around and our president has used inflammatory language at times. The bottom line is no matter the rhetoric, he wants people to enter legally and he does not care where they come from – South of the border or Eastern Europe; Africa or Asia. The charges of racism are just as inflammatory as any statement Trump has made. It is an old, tired canard that any Republican is racist because they want immigrants to enter the country legally.

In fact, you really have to look at people who insist on allowing people who come across our southern border without legal justification as the racists. They are the ones insisting on people from a certain origin to be able to flood across the border to the detriment of people from Asia, Africa and Europe who are trying to come here legally. If anyone is racist, it is these people.

What continues to be a difference between the parties is that Republicans want legal immigrants. The Democrats recently referred to illegal immigrants as “undocumented workers.” Now they just refer to them as the “immigrant community.” They refuse to even differentiate between people who came here through legal processes and those who came here through illegal means. That was why The Left was so perplexed on how to respond when an illegal immigrant recently killed a legal non-white immigrant who was a police officer. They could not find the means to even comment and certainly they were not wildly defending the family of the dead officer.

Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York recently exemplified the matter in a complete manner. He pardoned 22 people and commuted the sentences of another seven. He started his news release by stating “With President Trump and the Federal Government waging a war on our border against immigrant communities …” That in itself is nonsensical because immigrant communities are not trying to get into our country illegally – individuals are.

Reading the biographies as written by the governor’s office of the people he pardoned, you would think he was the pope naming saints. First, they start by saying they were minor crimes. Well, yes; they were minor because they were plea-bargained to lesser offenses. Some were drug dealers, which means they were dealing cocaine or heroin because the ones dealing marijuana were identified as such to lessen the perception of their crimes.

Perhaps some of these people were worthy of being pardoned and have led a fine, law-abiding life since their release from prison. Some were even senior citizens. But sugar-coating what they did is demeaning. It was not stated any of them had been unjustly charged.

Not one was identified as being here legally. A couple came here legally because the Governor trumpeted that, but were not identified as being here legally now. As for the others, their status—past and present—was not stated. Yet, they are just members of our immigrant community.

Recently, Speaker Pelosi suggested it was better to settle the budget deal and then negotiate on immigration. She must think Republicans are really stupid. Senator Schumer suggested the same thing in his speech rebutting the president on this past Tuesday. They know the press will move on to their next attack on Trump and never hold the Dems accountable for not negotiating.

Speaker Pelosi further validated this in the meeting with President Trump when she made clear she was not going to provide any more money for border security. Democrats argue that only a third of the people coming here illegally come across our Southern border as if a third is not a significant amount. But Pelosi did not say, by the way, we want to increase immigration control at seaports and airports. We want to provide money for visa control. She has stated none of that.

Republicans know that something Dems care about more than even illegal immigrants is federal employees who vote for Democrats in droves and feed the Dems’ campaign coffers. Pelosi knows where her bread is buttered and she also knows that she will never come to the table on immigration without a gun to her head.

Better yet, she should define these experts that she and Senator Schumer keep referring to that are saying they have alternatives to the border wall. No one believes the wall by itself is the solution or that it will run along our entire Southern border, but continuing to mouth ridiculous statements that walls don’t work defies the logic of the most basic-thinking person. It appears the other solutions for border security by these so-called experts are just statements in the wind because you know they would be out there with charts and graphs showing the other solutions. Yet the press negligently never pushes for a definition of the alternatives.

Republicans on more than one occasion have agreed to a legalization of illegal immigrants with assurances that proper controls will be put in place at a further time. President Bush proposed comprehensive immigration reform with border security measures, but did not set that as the first priority. It is good someone is drawing the line. Any wavering Republicans should realize elections are so far away that maybe five people will vote based on this budget shutdown. It has no political relevance.

What has political relevance is moving along border security for our country. Then visa control. Then a proper system to assure only people here legally are hired by employers – e-verify. Then straightening out the court system for immigration to properly handle legal immigration on a timely basis. Then we can deal with the DACA people and the rest of the people here illegally.